Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/276

Rh and naturally modelled; the brows are delicately arched; the features carefully and truthfully formed; the hair and beard softly massed and subdivided into orderly locks, as in a fine Greek coin. There is no undue elaboration or attempt to give the hard stone a look of real hair; but as far as the material would naturally allow the sculptor as suggested it. With special care and tenderness has he wrought the mouth, the thin, gently compressed, lips, the light parted moustache, and the well-formed chin. The drapery is as simple and severe in its lines as is that of the preceding figure; but there is a superior grace of arrangement in the folds, and although the work is wanting in the freedom and skill of later productions, there is no trace of Byzantine convention in its modelling. Altogether this figure, which dates probably from about the middle of the twelfth century, distinctly manifests a new and high order of genius. And it fully indicates those traits which afterwards became so conspicuously characteristic of the French Schools, and to which they owe their pre-eminence,—the disposition to profit by tradition, and at the same time to draw fresh materials from living nature.

The statues of the west front of the Cathedral of Chartres are probably of a little later date. They are more severely architectural in character than the figures of St. Denis; but they are not rigid like the sculptures of St. Trophime. In execution they are remarkably refined and